single

Thursday

Another hour of steady state on the erg. I made it a little more interesting by varying the stroke rate every minute in intervals 1and 2, then reverting to a more traditional rate ladder in the last 20minute interval.

Yep’ in the last interval I did a cooling down at the end. I had some fun looking at stroke data on Rowsandall.com:

Pretty consistent drive length there.

Friday

I will be in the USA for 6 days next week, tomorrow I will do an erg lactate test, and on Sunday I will probably go running. So today was the day to get in some steady state, not too hard, in the single.

It is funny. I know Work per Stroke goes down at the end of the workout, but I seem incapable of preventing this to happen.

It was a great workout. The water was not flat but still very rowable, I was the only single out except for s lightweight guy from the other club, accompanied by his coach in a launch. At one point I needed to speed up a bit to stay ahead of his wake. The young LW guy is a bit faster than I but he was doing some intervals and by working a bit harder during his rest and staying focused on technique I stayed ahead of his coach’s wake.

When I was cleaning my boat after the row, Ondřej Synek walked on to our club. It was great to chat with him. He is in town for the Sport Life trade fair, promoting Concept2 ergometers, and decided to pay us a surprise visit. We showed him our boats and he talked about racing in Brno as a junior. Then he walked into the erg training of our Juniors. They almost fell off their ergs.

The sun of Austerlitz was tearing apart the fog when I drove past the famous battlefield. I was on my way to Úherské Hradiště and it was a beautiful morning. The sun was coming up behind the hills towards the east, as I passed the famous tree on the Santon hill. From Wikipedia:

The battle took place about six miles (ten kilometers) southeast of the town of Brno, between that town and Austerlitz (Czech: Slavkov u Brna) in what is now the Czech Republic. The northern part of the battlefield was dominated by the 700-foot (210-meter) Santon Hill and the 880-foot (270-meter) Zuran (Žuráň) Hill, both overlooking the vital Olomouc/Brno road, which was on an east/west axis. To the west of these two hills was the village of Bellowitz (Bedřichovice), and between them the Bosenitz (Roketnice) stream went south to link up with the Goldbach (Říčka) stream, the latter flowing by the villages of Kobelnitz (Kobylnice), Sokolnitz (Sokolnice), and Telnitz (Telnice).

A dense fog helped to cloud the advance of St. Hilaire’s French division, but as they went up the slope the legendary ‘Sun of Austerlitz’ ripped the mist apart and encouraged them forward.[41] Russian soldiers and commanders on top of the heights were stunned to see so many French troops coming towards them.[43] Allied commanders moved some of the delayed detachments of the fourth column into this bitter struggle. Over an hour of fighting destroyed much of this unit. The other men from the second column, mostly inexperienced Austrians, also participated in the struggle and swung the numbers against one of the best fighting forces in the French army, eventually forcing them to withdraw down the slopes. However, gripped by desperation, St. Hilaire’s men struck hard once more and bayoneted the Allies out of the heights. To the north, General Vandamme’s division attacked an area called Staré Vinohrady (“Old Vineyards”) and, through talented skirmishing and deadly volleys, broke several Allied battalions.[44]

In fact, I discovered on my Instagram feed that a drone user discovered the same magic moment. Here is a picture he took of the Prace hill.

An hour later I arrived at rowing club Moravia Uherske Hradiste. I would spend the morning there, waiting for the early races to finish, load singles on my trailer and shuttle them back to the start for the afternoon races. The weather was gorgeous when I arrived and I took a few pictures of the mirror flat river Morava.

Sitting on the bank, watching the races, noting down times about 200m before the finish line. In this head race, the start time is exactly on the clock, in one minute intervals. So by starting the stopwatch as the first boat of a field passed, then noting the differences, I could see the results as they happened. It was quite interesting, especially in the Juniors 1x and the Girls Juniors 1x, where there were s few unexpected fast boats in the back of the field and a few favorites performed badly. This is going to lead to discussions, because funds for youth are distributed to the best twelve rowers, using the outcome of this race and a 6k erg test in November.

The sun disappeared and the weather got humid. Then it started to rain. The mirror flat water got ripples and the final stretch had a nasty headwind – good Werthera for powerful rowers.

By noon I saw the last boat of my batch finish, loaded it and drove to the start. I arrived there at 1pm, with my race start time being 1:50pm sharp. That is when they start the stopwatch to measure my 6k. Arrive late and you will find your clock already running.

I grabbed my start number 225, rigged my boat in heavy rain, then changed to racing gear in the club minivan, and carried the boat to the dock to launch 20 minutes before my race time. No time for a warming up run. I warmed up with a few speed burst while the sun came out again.

My main opponents were Mr Machacek, the president of the Czech Rowing Federation, fresh back from Sarasota, with start number 227 (starting two minutes after me) and Mr Cernak with 228, who regularly beats me on the 1k distance. But Cernak is a sprinter pur sang. Mr Skodik with nr 226 had scratched, unfortunately, so there would be a gap of two minutes between me and Mr Machacek.

I started as the second boat in the Masters 1x field and had good hopes of passing number 224 fast.

The river was flowing and the referees ordered me to counter Row constantly so I would not drift past the starting line. Mr Machacek shouted: “Give him a warning! He is so fast he doesn’t need a shorter course.” I didn’t get a warning.

The start was good and I rowed a few hard strokes, then tried to settle for 250-260W on the SpeedCoach, as well as making the first turn. Turns were slightly harder than in other years, because I didn’t wear my rear view mirror. I had decided to not wear it because of the rain.

I tried to estimate the difference between Mr Machacek and myself when he rounded that first turn. It looked like about 500 meters.

So, now I was doing business. Focus on form. Don’t go crazy in the first three kilometers. In terms of Watts, I was pulling a bit harder than my target of 255W. But I was also closing in on the guy ahead of me. Perhaps I could pass him before half way?

Well, that didn’t happen. It took the entire 1000m between 3km and 2km to go to close in and pass him. I rounded the big turn at the beer brewery, using the power lines to time the moment to start the turn. I remembered this from last year. Turn when you are under the second power lines. After the turn I took the ideal line to the next turn, pushing the other guy into the bank, which he obviously didn’t like. Too close to the bank and the flow of the river is reduced and you slow down markedly. So now I was rowing in his puddles and there was a risk of blade collision.

However, gripped by desperation, St. Hilaire’s men struck hard once more and bayoneted the Allies out of the heights.

I turned my head and shouted “Damnit, move over”, pushed the power up a bit and rowed through him. Head racing is fun. You get to talk with your opponents. He didn’t talk back, though.

In hindsight, this was all very good. I kept the pressure high in that difficult middle part. Now it was only 2k to the finish line. Would I dare to keep the power above 270W?

I guess not. I had passed the guy and it also seemed that the gap with Mr Machacek was widening. At that point in the race, I thought it highly likely that I would win, and I focused on being above 245W and rowing with good form.

In the last kilometer I started counting strokes, and I also passed a boat from the tail of the Open Women 1x field. The lady thanked me afterward for chasing her. It had helped her struggle through the final 2km.

With 20 strokes to go I emptied the tank, and then I collapsed behind the finish line. I noticed that it was 14 past the hour on the SpeedCoach and waited for Mr Machacek to finish. Seemed to take ages, but it was worth it. There were definitely more than 2 minutes between us, and more than three minutes between me and Mr Cernak.

Details. I think the pace fluctuations are mainly due to differences in the river flow and the wind, which was a headwind in the initial km and the final 3km.

I did a 2k cooling down, during which it started to rain again. In my wet racing gear I prepared the boat for transport, then I changed to dry clothes, headed to the club house, got my medal, had a bowl of soup and a hot tea, and that was the end of a great race.

Playful rowing

Today, I had to prepare my boat for transport, and the training program asked for a short, light recovery row. Given the time I could leave from work and the fact that it gets dark earlier and earlier, my original plan was to drive to the club, put the boat on the trailer, and do an erg workout, either at the club or at home.

But it was beautiful weather and the lake was mirror flat. I decided to go OTW with my single, shorten the training even a bit more, and have fun rowing. I did steady state with some speed bursts at roughly head race pace.

There was a Masters pair on the water, and towards the end of the workout, I literally rowed around it:

Tuesday – Sunday

No training. Nothing at all. On Tuesday I was tired. On Wednesday, my family and I traveled to Brussels. On Thursday, first I had to get my wife and kids on track for their site seeing in Brussels, and then I had to attend a long meeting. At the end of the day, we drove to my parents’ place in The Netherlands.

On Friday, we made a bike tour around Enschede. A few hours on the bike. Nothing intensive.

On Saturday, I wanted to go running, but in the morning it was raining too hard, then we made a small trip to the castle of Bad Bentheim (in Germany) and in the afternoon my sisters had arrived, so I preferred to spend time with them.

On Sunday we drove back to Brussels and flew to Vienna. We landed at 5pm local time, and were in the car by 5:30. Just in time for Romana to start following the live broadcast of the World Championships Men 1x final. I was driving, but we heard the comments, and Romana was commenting as well. It was great to witness Synek’s win live.

This was a long, not really planned training pause. I must say I don’t regret it. I am hoping that it doesn’t decrease my fitness significantly. I had work and family priorities. Also, I felt hungry during the entire week and ate large meals. I am secretly hoping that my body is building up necessary reserves.

Monday

A long working day. But still I wanted to go on the water and do a 6k trial. Shock therapy after such a long training pause.

The last one before the race of coming Saturday. It turns out it was good that I arrived so late. The weather had been windy and the lake was far too choppy to row until 6pm. When I arrived, all rowers were indoors rowing on ergometers. I was the first to go out. When I rowed to the starting point for my 6k, it was still quite choppy on the lake part, but the wind strength was decreasing rapidly.

Behind Veveří castle, I turned around the single and got ready for the 6k.

I was wondering what a good average power would be for Saturday’s race. The CP chart on https://rowsandall.com tells me it is around 256 W. My last 6k race was on April 6, when I averaged 244 W. For today, I aimed at 240W, assuming that on race day I will be able to row at the same power, perhaps a few % faster.

I focused on not pulling too hard in the beginning (both in terms of power as in work per stroke) and feeling the boat run. I think I succeeded quite well with that.

Between km 2 and 3 I was going through a narrow part, which was even more complicated than normally because I

It was getting too dark to see anything in my rear view mirror

I was passing two paddle boarders in the final turn

Then, arriving at the lake, the chop increased and the headwind became stronger.

Comparing with the April race is also interesting. Light blue is the race. Orange is today’s session:

I think I can conclude that I am not in bad shape. Interesting to see the difference in Drive Length. I wasn’t aware I am rowing shorter than in April. The dips and peaks in the power values are due to steering (which was virtually absent in the April race). I am not comparing pace, because the conditions were incomparable.

The chop had a marked influence on Wash values:

So, pretty happy with the result. For the rest of the week, I will be tied to the erg. Customer visits. Long days. Business dinners, one of them I cannot escape from.

Because I had swapped Friday and Saturday, messing up my three day schedule of hard/easy/easy workouts, I had another hard distance row to do on Monday. Saturday was 8km. This time it would be the 7k. Probably a bit shorter. I wanted to row it without 180 degree stop and turn interruptions. From the 90 degree turn close to Veveří castle to Sirka is 6.5km.

Doing so many of these makes it easier to churn out another one. One gets used to it.

Arriving at the rowing club, I discovered that I had forgotten my SpeedCoach. No power values. I would have to row this one purely on ‘boat feel’. Well, that actually wouldn’t be a bad idea, and the flat water on the river part of the 6.5km would help keeping a focus on technique.

I used the Garmin Forerunner as my reliable data recording tool. On the Android phone, I had a choice between Quiske RowP, but that doesn’t export sessions yet, a non activated version of CrewNerd, and an app I had never personally used: BoatCoach. Well, my rowsandall support for this app was long overdue, so why not try out that one.

So the row started by crossing the lake and then a 5 km paddle through the gorges. On the lake I noticed a stiff tailwind, which would be a headwind battle on the hard distance part of this session. In the gorge, there was no wind and mirror flat water. Cool. Also cool was that some of the tree are slowly turning yellow.

I didn’t get BoatCoach to give me reliable information about stroke rate. The value kept jumping up and down between 10spm (missing to register a stroke) and 40 spm (registering boat movements as strokes). I tried several settings combinations, playing with stroke sensitivity and phone orientation. Nothing helped.

That is how I arrived at the castle, rowed up to the turn, and turned the boat. A few moments of doubt snd contemplation, and then I set off.

I wasn’t sure what pace to hold so I tried to row on feel, but I was happy to see faster than 2:10 at a pace that seemed sustainable. As spm on BoatCoach was unreliable, now and then I counted strokes over 30 second intervals. Thirteen to fourteen strokes consistently, so 26 to 28 spm.

It was fun. I had the comfort of my rear view mirror. Although I still had to look now and then to make sure, because the contrast between the reflection of the trees in the water and the trees on the bank wasn’t great, it allowed me to turn, pick a course, and row 10 to 20 strokes without checking, focusing purely on letting the boat run, getting that springy lightness into the catch, sitting up straight, and generally showing the wildlife how good rowing looks. (Or so I pretended.)

In the narrow and twisty part I had to hug the bank to avoid an oncoming big tourist boat. I also noticed that the reported pace showed values below 2:00. Looking at the GPS trace, the cause is clear. This is not me needing a steering clinic:

The GPS of the phone apparently didn’t like rowing under the trees in the gorge.

Coming on to the lake I was still holding a 2:09 average and feeling good. This row was a blast!

After the nude beach (without nudes) I hit the headwind. Pace slowed down to 2:20 as I battled through that. Towards Rokle the lake started to be a bit more shielded. I wound up the rate. The water was flat again, and boat speed responded positively.

I wasn’t too exhausted after this row, and my heart rate values are in a nice range, slightly lower than on the previous few hard distance rows.

Paddled home happily. In the locker room, I casually mentioned that I did a full out 6k. Actually, a 6.5k.

Pace and heart rate – for the 6.5km part – according to GarminI added BoatCoach OTW support to the site. No heart rate as I didn’t couple the chest belt. SPM all over the place

Another rainy Saturday. It is interesting. On Friday, when I had to give up OTW rowing because of work and traffic jams, it was nice and sunny autumn weather. Today it was gray and rainy. And choppy. We managed to get the rowing training in during the only window of dry weather of the day, but it wasn’t ideal.

I was going to do my 8km hard distance, and Romana’s Junior girl Iva was doing a 6k full out. We are both preparing for the same head race. We paddled a warming up paddle to Rokle and then we had to wait. Two big tourist boats were passing, and we had to time our start to minimize the risk of getting into a collision course with these boats (which do a zig-zag trajectory crossing the lake several times) or having to row through their wake. You can see their course on the map. It’s the dashed blue line.

I gave Iva a 1 minute advantage, but when I saw her steering a quite wide course in that first minute, I decided to give her 2 minutes. Ideally, that would allow her to stay in the lead for her entire 6k and help her achieve a maximum effort. So I sat around waiting for another 2 minutes.

During which a clueless kayakker paddled right into my trajectory, turned around, and stopped paddling, his back towards me and staring in the other direction. With 20 seconds to go I caught his attention and when he finally understood that I would prefer him to not be in my course, he paddled away slowly.

After 1000m I had to deviate slightly from the ideal line to avoid the worst wake from one of the tourist boats. In the second kilometer, I thought that I was gaining fast on Iva, but it was confusing. Then I remembered that Iva doesn’t row in anything else than bright, fluorescent colors, so the rowers in front of me were probably somebody else. Indeed, they were a double and a single from the other club.

I rowed into the narrow part at Sirka when Iva was leaving it. After 3km, I stopped, turned, and got rowing immediately.

About 4km in, I had to change course to avoid being caught between two tourist boats. I also rated up slightly because I wanted to cross in front of one of them.

Despite these complications, I was getting closer to Iva. About 500m after the pedalo rental was the point where Iva was supposed to go all out. Indeed, it seemed that the rate of me closing in on her was slowing down a bit. It was a great hunt. It is really good to row and compete with someone else, even when you give yourself a handicap.

Turning around to do the final 2km of my 8km was hard. I shouted a few encouragements to Iva who was finishing her 6k, and then set out to survive the 7th kilometer, and wind it up for a big push on the 8th. I did the big push, and it was mentally very hard. But as always, I was glad I did it in the end.

Looking at the pace, I am glad to see it responded quite well to the increased power. Technique was not falling apart today. I am also fascinated by the speed peak at 17 minutes into the row. This was when I had to row harder to stay ahead of the big tourist boat. I guess being distracted, not focusing on the pain, but just on passing in front of that boat, gives you a boost in boat speed.

I did use the Quiske system with the sensor under the seat again.

During the row, I had the Quiske RowP app set to show acceleration. But I have to be honest. I didn’t check it once during the hard distance row. There is too much going on when your heart rate is above 180 to look at a wiggly curve on a phone screen. Otherwise, the after-row curves, averages over all strokes per section of the row, are consistent with my feeling that I was pretty consistent. That is consistency doubled. The differences I see can be explained by rating up to higher and higher rates.

I am back on the erg. Now that Bled is behind me, and because September is a hectic month at work, I am reducing the number of water sessions and starting to row more on the erg.

Somehow, I am even looking forward to it. Playing with the lactate measurements. Improving Rowsandall.com for erg users.

On Sunday, we actually planned a row in a mixed 8+, but in the end only Romana and I showed up for the session. It was raining very hard. I put the erg on slides in the rowing club erg room and rowed steady state. Painsled (the app I use for recording erg data) and I didn’t get along very well. I was running it on my new iPhone, connected to a PM3 with the cable, and it was misbehaving.

On Monday, I rowed steady state on my static erg at home. Using Painsled on the iPad, with the PM5 without any problems.

The sessions were not exciting enough to write a long blog post about. They were short. I need to prepare my erging. A collection of podcasts to listen to. And then slowly build up the length. Perhaps use a seat pad. I seem to have become more sensitive for pain in that part of the body.

Tuesday

The core of this training mesocycle is hard distance, combined with intervals at head race pace (with short rests). Today, I was targeting a 9km in the single. I do not think that I can significantly move my fitness in the three weeks I have to prepare for this race, but by doing a lot of these long rows, I think I can work on my mental toughness. Rowing long hard distances at head race pace causes an entirely different kind of fatigue than sprint racing. Also, it is a way to calibrate my power curve and figure out the power I can sustain over 6km. And finally, I need to work on my technique at 26-30spm. It is a different stroke than the sprint stroke.

To make this one even harder mentally, I decided to go to work before it, and to row it in windy and rainy weather.

Well, that wasn’t my decision. I have a job and I like it. And there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done at the office. And the weather is the weather. It’s autumn.

It was raining hard when I drove to the rowing club. When I arrived, Romana just finished her session in the eight. The girls were very wet and freezing.

I put on enough layers, and while I was preparing the boat (putting the Quiske sensor under the seat, setting up the Android phone in its holder), the rain stopped. There was a very dark cloud to the north though, and I did expect to get very wet during the session. But I was lucky, and it didn’t happen.

During the warming up, I was passed by a double with white blades (the other rowing club). To do my 9km, I had to row a little further towards Rokle than they did, and when I started the 9k, I realized I was rowing towards them and their coach in a launch. There was a risk that I would be constantly rowing in the wake of the launch, and this particular boat from the Lodni Sporty club is a very bad one. I don’t understand why their coach didn’t take the Catamaran when it was available. Apparently this boat is more comfortable, but it is heavy, and causes pretty big waves.

I actually almost caught up with them while they were listening to some coach instructions, but then they set off. I rowed slightly behind the double and in a parallel trajectory that was about 50m more to the west, to avoid being too close to the launch. First, they were rowing away from me and I was watching the wake coming closer and closer to me, but then they slowed down slightly, I added a little pressure, and I overtook them.

Turning at Sirka, and rowing back immediately towards Sirka. This is one of the hard parts of rowing a longer hard distance row with turns. It is hard to get back to the rhythm, and the rowing seems to hurt a little more in the first 10 strokes after the short pause. Crossing the launch’s wake took only four or five stroke.

In the third interval, I got more wake. The double and the launch were going towards Rokle when I was already rowing back, but the lake is narrower there and with hard, concrete banks, so you get the reflection, and the reflection of the reflection, so there were 20 or 30 strokes where my boat was bumping up and down, turning left and right, and it caused a dip in power:

It is clear from the chart that I had tailwind in the first and last 3k (3k being one lake length) and headwind in the middle 3k. A couple of interesting metric charts. I wanted to hold a little below 600J in terms of Work per Stroke, but I am seeing that this is not sustainable over more then 6k.

Also, I can see how I sit up less straight when getting tired, which is effecting mainly the Wash value:

The Quiske charts are interesting. From the above metrics and from how I felt, I had already established that the third part of the row was technically the worst. Here are the Quiske charts (red being the final interval):

I think that the difference in seat speed is caused mainly by me rowing a little shorter and a little higher rate in the third interval. Looking at the boat acceleration curves, my mind is racing, thinking about ways to minimize the deceleration dip coming into the catch …